Delhi woman one of many saved by surgery technology

Trial procedure may give doctors a choice instead of open heart surgery

Aug. 25, 2013

Martha Spitzmueller of Delhi Township / The Enquirer/Joseph Fuqua II

About the surgery

Who might be considered for this procedure? • Patients who are not candidates for open heart valve surgery due to complex medical conditions. • Patients with serious aortic valve stenosis (AVS), documented by echocardiogram. • Patients with symptoms of AVS, which include shortness of breath, fatigue, chest pain and fainting. • Patients willing and able to complete all of the required follow-up visits after surgery. For information: Call the Christ Hospital Heart Valve Clinic at 866-293-0566.

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Martha Spitzmueller has her pep back.

The 92-year-old Delhi Township resident is among more than 100 Christ Hospital patients whose lives have been saved by a new technology that keeps the most fragile patients from enduring invasive open heart surgeries.

“I feel like I’m 72 again,” said Spitzmueller, who learned in October that she suffered from aortic valve stenosis (AVS).

The condition is a thickening of the aortic valve that limits blood flow from the heart to the rest of the body.

About 10 percent of Americans age 80 and older have some degree of AVS, experts at Christ say. Without treatment, a patient’s life expectancy is between one and five years.

For decades, the standard treatment has been open heart surgery to replace the weakened, dying valve. That surgery requires weeks if not months of recovery, though, and not everyone, including patients like Spitzmueller, are healthy enough to endure it.

Following her diagnosis last year, Spitzmueller was referred to Christ Hospital, where clinical trials are underway using technology that allows for a catheter-based procedure to replace the valve.

Christ is among the first hospitals in the country where trials are underway testing the success of surgical valve replacement compared to the transcatheter aortic valve replacement, said Dr. Dean Kereiakes, medical director of the hospital’s Heart & Vascular Center.

“We’ve been able to treat patients that would otherwise have to leave Cincinnati, or may not have been offered treatment at all because they were older and more frail,” said Kereiakes.

Before her procedure, Spitzmueller said she had lost all of her energy and stopped taking her daily neighborhood walks.

“I could barely make it from room to room,” said the mother of four and grandmother of 10.

“I had lost my pep,” she said, “but I thought, ‘That’s what happens when you’re 91.’ ”

After the Dec. 17 procedure, she spent just three days in the hospital. Now, she’s back to her usual routine – and more.

“What thrills me the most is that I got to dance at my granddaughter’s wedding two weeks ago in Chicago,” said Spitzmueller. “I was just so excited with myself that I could keep up with them.”

Kereiakes’s oldest patient to date was a 97-year-old World War II veteran. “These are truly remarkable human beings who have lived incredible lives,” he said.

At times, Kereiakes said, he’s been asked whether it’s “realistic” to perform the catheter-based valve replacement on patients who have so many years behind them.

He tells those people to go talk to patients like Spitzmueller, the WWII vet and others.

“Until and unless we’re going to systematically dismiss people based on age alone as a defining criteria, I think this is clearly a better technology than surgery,” he said. ⬛